Big Blue and Gang Green are building a gleaming new $1.3 billion home so high-tech, they won’t have to share color schemes.
When it opens in 2010, the as-yet unnamed, 82,500-seat stadium will feature a “great wall” – 400-foot-long- by-40-foot-high panels placed behind aluminum louvers, yet visible from outside.
The wall will be blue for the Giants’ home games, green for the Jets’ home games, and whatever colors are appropriate for the 80 concerts, college football games and other events at the stadium.
“You will definitely know which team is the home team,” Giants co-owner Steve Tisch said yesterday as the teams unveiled plans for the shared stadium, which is going up in New Jersey’s Meadowlands next door to Giants Stadium.
“When Jet fans arrive, they will come home to a stadium that bleeds green,” boasted Jets Chairman and CEO Woody Johnson.
The bowl-shaped new stadium will be surrounded by a massive parking area with 27,500 spaces that will include a specially designed 300,000-square-foot tailgating plaza with food and drink concessions, rest rooms and pregame entertainment areas.
The teams are planning a new railroad link that will whisk fans from Penn Station to the stadium door.
Inside, fans will find two big main concourses ranging from 35 to 70 feet wide, team stores spread over 15,000 square feet, and 20,000 square feet of “themed activities” for sponsors.
About 200 skyboxes will be offered to corporate sponsors and other high rollers, a source said.
Open-air seating will be offered on three levels. Fans wanting to be closer to the action will be offered front-row seats just 46 feet from the sidelines, and a field-level club between the 40-yard lines will offer even closer views.
Four jumbo video screens, 40 feet tall by 130 feet wide, will be built inside the arena to function as scoreboards, the teams said. Another dozen 16-by-9-foot screens will be spread around the concourses and the outside plaza, and 2,500 more high-definition displays will be spread around the rest of the stadium.
Construction kicked off in May on the open-air facility.
Instead of holding a groundbreaking ceremony, team officials gathered with New Jersey politicians yesterday to sign one of the stadium’s construction beams. Among those present were Hall of Fame Giants linebacker Harry Carson and retired Jets running back Curtis Martin.
Johnson said the teams decided against halting work for yesterday’s ceremony. “We’re ahead of schedule. We want to keep the party going.”
The Giants and Jets are the only pro sports teams that see a future playing in New Jersey’s state-owned Meadowlands complex, which was once discussed as a possible site for a new Yankee Stadium.
Expect tickets to be hard to get. For years, the Giants and Jets have both played before sellout crowds, and they don’t expect that to change in the new stadium, which will be about 6,500 seats bigger.
Strapped New Jersey taxpayers won’t pay anything towards the stadium itself. But the state will spend around $300 million for infrastructure improvements, including the train station and upgrades to the New Jersey Turnpike.